ARTICLES BY OLIVER GRIEVSON

  • Delivering Digital Water — Are We There Yet?
    11/3/2022
    The water industry's greatest technology trend is also one with scattershot levels of adoption, but that can change with proper understanding of the purpose for and pathway toward Digital Water.
  • Instrumentation And Digital Transformation
    12/3/2020

    Whether you call it Digital Transformation, Water 4.0, or Smart Water, the water industry as a whole is changing drastically in the way that it operates. If you ask a dozen people what these buzzwords mean, you will naturally get a dozen answers. It is because the Digital Transformation of the water industry is different for different people and for different operational and management aspects of what is done to produce water, distribute it to customers, collect it, treat it, and put it back to the environment.

  • The Drive Towards Digital Transformation
    11/25/2019

    It seems that everywhere that you go in the water industry at the current time, somebody is talking about digital transformation…or if we go back five minutes, it was Water 4.0…and 10 minutes ago (it seems), it was “smart water.” These are all very well used buzzwords that the industry is destined to think about for a short-term and then promptly forget about. In reality, though, we as an industry have been hit by a number of different concepts for a number of different technological aspects for a good number of years now. For almost as long we have had a term for all of this — “widgets.”

  • How Do We Get To 'Meaningful' Measurement?
    11/10/2017

    The question of how to get the most out of the data that we collect as an industry was central to the Sensing in Water Conference recently hosted by the Sensors for Water Interest Group (SWIG). The two-day conference highlighted several themes on how to get the best of the data that the Water Industry collects and how to make our measurements “meaningful.” Chief among those themes was greater collaboration among the different stakeholders, including water companies, universities, and the supply chain.

  • Smart Wastewater Networks, From Micro To Macro
    7/10/2017

    The journey to “smart” has proven more challenging for wastewater networks than for potable water, but real-world impact is imminent. Learn what potential awaits the industry at monitoring’s latest frontier.

  • Is Water 4.0 The Future?
    4/21/2016

    Water 4.0 is a concept that has recently been raised as the “future” of the water industry …possibly. Apart from being a paraphrase of Industry 4.0, the questions have to be asked: What is it, and what does it have to do with the way the water industry operates in its current state?

  • The Instrumentation Life-Cycle And Instrumentation Systems Within The UK Water Industry: From Concept To Replacement
    1/12/2016

    The water industry in the UK faces a turning point in the use of instrumentation with the advent of TOTEX (capital expenditures [CAPEX] + operating expenditures [OPEX]) within the current Asset Management Period, the sixth since it privatized in 1989.

  • Measuring Organic Load: Is BOD Still A Relevant Measure In The Modern Water Industry?
    10/22/2015

    Biochemical oxygen demand, or BOD, is probably one of the most- and least-known parameters in the wastewater industry.

  • Do I Really Need A New Flow Meter?
    4/13/2015

    If you’re behind on flow meter technology, it’s understandable — wastewater monitoring and measurement devices have come a long way. Here’s your chance to catch up.

  • The Rights And Wrongs Of Measuring Flow In Wastewater
    2/10/2015

    Innovation is upon us in flow meter design, allowing for more technology options and better precision. Don’t let faulty installations or O&M set you back.

  • What’s So “Smart” About Potable Smart Water Networks?
    9/15/2014

    Smart Networks— no matter if they are on the potable side of the industry or the wastewater side— seem to be one of the next battlegrounds for efficiency.

  • Is It Time For An Intelligent Wastewater Network?
    7/18/2014

    Mainland Europe has had intelligence in some of its wastewater networks for over ten years now, and some of the oldest real-time control systems in the U.S. date back to the 1980’s. So why has intelligence in the wastewater network not been more abundant?

  • Understanding The Value of Instrumentation In The Water Industry
    5/12/2014

    As long as instrumentation is selected, installed, commissioned, and maintained properly the data that it can give is invaluable to the water industry. 

  • Instrumentation In Activated Sludge: Past, Present, And Future
    4/21/2014

    After a century of operation, the activated sludge process is still being fine-tuned to meet today’s challenging treatment and efficiency targets.

Oliver Grievson

Oliver Grievson

Oliver Grievson is the group manager of the Water Industry Process Automation and Control LinkedIn discussion group. He has many years experience firstly in the laboratory and for the past 12 years in the operational and process management of both potable and wastewater treatment works. He is also a member of the MCERTS Steering Group for the monitoring of flow, a member of the ICA Special Interest Group on ICA as well as sitting on the Wastewater Management Committees of the Foundation for Water Research and the Chartered Institute of Water & Environmental Management. He holds Fellowships with both the Institute of Environmental Sciences and CIWEM as well as being Chartered Environmentalist, Scientist and Water & Environmental Manager. He lives in the UK where he works for one of the UK Water & Sewerage Companies.